I actually liked Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, sure it was stupid but I think it has to be appreciated for what it is. I'm not seeing the new Transformers movie. The first I was able to forgive because it was introducing the characters, the rest suck. They need to reboot the franchise and do it right this time.

A-freakin'-men. Crystal Skull isn't a bad movie, at worst it's kinda mediocre. But I have to say that as a series on the whole, I enjoyed the Indiana Jones movies MORE than Star Wars. Even taking the prequels out of the equation. But all six Star Wars are alright, if you don't take them seriously.

Crystal Skull isn't mediocre at all, and I can give you a review that sums up why it's the best in the series:

"..we still have the issues about the direction we'd like to take. I'm in the future;Steven's in the past. He's trying to drag it back to the way they were, I'm trying topush it to a whole different place. So, still we have a sort of tension. This recent onecame out of that." - George Lucas

Two brains made a movie. George Lucas' exponentially more complex story-liningand Steven Spielberg's amiably increasing Antonionisms merge for convulsiveweirdness in the latest install of the Indiana Jones epic. Tossing aside the thinningplot styles of the last two Jones films, Crystal Skull is a mutation of key themesestablished in Raiders, essentially a return to form (return is a theme the film layerson), and outlays an attempt to bridge Old Testament and (potential) futuretestaments. The Jones films are about myth and our reckless use and awareness oftheir power(s). Look closely into Skull and you'll see the act of preserving myth isthe nail humans hammer dead-on into the collective coffin, the film offers lavishdeceptions underneath the plot you think you are watching, and shows both realand perceived coffins for us to relish our deaths in one day, or crystallize a way outinto newer tropes of time use (the goal of the film is achievable for humans onlyoutside the film's timeline since the characters misinterpret the skull and its usesentirely). Ultimately Skull will only be understood by the 9 year-olds out there in thedark that feel the magic enough to dream the solution.Ultra visually astute thinkers, Lucas and Spielberg aim for simplicity: they use thewarehouse that ends Raiders as a form/structure that the final throne room ofCrystal Skull embodies, though scale is altered and the form has been renderedcircular. They saucerize it and alter the enclosure scheme: treasures are leftexposed for viewing and the boxes become the throne room. These forms animatescene-to-scene until the final saucer departs. The key mystery: the skull's powerand process by which it is returned is entirely explained by this form-changing, themyth of the skull's stealing is just that, a myth. The skull is a lure to a planet oftreasure seekers to test our right to evolve. Crucially the mystery remains unsolvedat film's end, Spalko, Jones or Oxley still do not understand what they have seen,yet this visual transformation of warehouse to saucer throne room explains it to usunconsciously.

Defying the current swell to digitalize fully, Spielberg has reverted to a strictlycelluloid release, forever condemning any hi-res masterpieces the ILM personnelare taping all over the canvas to the unusually able distortion of filmed optics (in away, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a time-machine since it resembles films witheffects from the 90's set in the 50's made late in the 00's). If you were to stare at amatte painting used in Raiders of the Lost Ark (see image above), you could orwould see brush strokes that become mountains once put under the lens and intothe bath. Celluloid hides many secrets digital formats can't. What you see is still thenegative/positive and its density of blacks (the dark) that brought blockbusterabstraction to the first two Jones films.The retro Paramount logo appears, it dissolves to a small mound. Immediately thetip crumbles, the upper sides cascade and the scale is proven by a prairie dog, whodusts himself off and races away from a tire that smashes his exit. There is a veileddis to Paramount, look above, studio politics can become subtle motion glyphs. Wedon't even see the first human form intrusion is a circle with a chrome hubcap, itblurs by so fast, but we can hear the engine. The metaphor: humans dominate herewithout being aware of their actual path: an earth/animal paradox. The prairie dogand the ants seen in the jungle both emerge from the ground, but where the prairiedog must flee, the ants do not. And don't forget, like Indiana, the ants and prairiedogs are earth diggers.The Red-Flamed, 'Hound-Dog' blaring, '32 Ford, a reference to Milner's Coupe fromAmerican Graffiti, is a materially formed American object. The Coupe zips acrossopen grassland and reaches two-lane blacktop where a military-starred Armyconvoy speeds, a vehicular storytelling style not unlike how ships approach planetsat the opening of Star Wars films. Don't forget the cars are 25 years apart in design,they bridge the era of Raiders with the one that this film is set in. Consider how weperceive their differences, to us they appear from the same era. And the song has asly under-meaning: Jones and his son are both named after George Lucas's dogs.Soldiers inside stare at them impassively: these are not North Americans (theywould be cheering). The kids driving the Coupe, screaming in an exact replica of theaudience's screaming for the film's opening night, ride up in the oncoming-lane andare shown mirrored in the Army's olive drab Ford's shiny hubcaps: the firstrecognizable saucer.This bookends the sequence with the first tire-shot, a mirror of mirrored saucers.These saucers the film references reflect our culture in ever magnifying scope. Thissaucer is being used to push metal with carbon-based fuel. As a film about saucersand the metaphysics of why our species imagines this spatiodynamic object as avehicular metaphor (see Jung's Flying Saucers for greatest details), Kingdom of theCrystal Skull is about our imagination and the metaphors we experience time-travelthrough, and paradoxically, the reasons these goals are unachievable. Imaginingimmortality has a dynamic place in film. Making fun of our quest for it is evenbetter.Spielberg responds to Lucas's maddeningly digital mirroring of the later Star Warsfilms with his own on-set mirrors, some are in landscapes, the clearest example isthe first and only cut inside the troop vehicle, the dark edge of the tarp roof makesa mountain shape that mirrors the previous landscape.Panning from interior to exterior, the reveal shot shows the Soviet driver's facelooking in camera at us in his circular rear-view (forcing us to 'become' thedragsters in their Coupe, this shot is cut from the hubcap mirror in perfect flow) andpanning to them in reflection as well, gaining ground. Look at all the circularobjects. Mirrors, headlamps. They come parallel to the lead car, containing theMuscle-Man leader of the Soviets, who warns his driver not to race the kids acrossfrom him. The kids swerve, avoiding a truck, but are undaunted, they plead with thedriver, who is young, to join them and he does once the females are framed,speeding off, his vehicle separating from the column. The kids cannot see this trunkhides our hero and whether he likes it or not, Indy is part of this contest. Spielberghas condensed the space-race and cold war into an innocuous drag. A flame vs. anationalist star that happens to represent both Soviet and U.S. ideologies.Splitting from the road, the Army column takes a right at the Atomic Cafe, an actualplace, during an actual time. The sign rises, final placement just above the horizon:a perfect prediction of the mushroom cloud that ends this next opening sequencemirrored perversely here, bookend number two. Neon hums. Dusk is arriving. Theechoes of "Hound Dog" become hollow. A major opening scene was to occur here inFrank Darabont's early draft of the film, it remains a ghost here of that paranoia.The title appears "NEVADA 1957" on a landscape that includes an unusually saucerlikecloud form on the right vista.After killing guards that have declared a 24 hour cut-off in access to a desertfacility, they drive in, on left a U.S. Flag and on the right, a series of crosses(telephone) that disappear behind a Restricted sign. Spielberg & co. suggest this isa somewhat nationalist - Christian undertaking, whatever this combustion columnhas as an underlying myth, it is unified by a cruciform. All these forms ride abovehorizon, their dominance is implicit. Telephone poles bookend later in establishingthe Peruvian locale, seemingly emanating from the central church's main cross. Thesecond view of the column penetrating the area is first overlaid with a black andwhite barrier and then our view is bisected by a foreground of Old Glory, the secondfive-pointed star we have spotted. Our star designed in reflection to our being.Click on image to see Skull's other checkpoint. Notice similarities, look very closely,some hints: the B&W angled stripes of the raised barriers become the angles of thecrypt's door AND the serpents that descend upon opening, Stop signs become thedual warning masks. Differences: notice the parallax horizon aimed left here andright there. Spielberg is insisting this beginning mirrors the ending, this is also aKingdom of a Crystal Skull, as one is kept here, buried and awaiting unlocking.Once ejected from the trunk, and preceded by his hat, a circle with a bump in it,Indy is surrounded by a circle of men aiming rifles at him. The film reuses Indy's hatshape as a saucer shape. The endless uses of it, especially shadowed, indicate howclose Indy is to comprehending Spalko's search. Our shadowed hero stands in frontof the car's star (military, is the atomic bomb also a military star?), the golden sunbehind him off-camera: he stands between our actual star off-screen, and ouridentification star, the five pointed one, between a mirror of asymmetrical stars.Showcasing Indy's form as silhouette, this film is about creatures that not only donot block light, they generate it. These glyphic shot-compositions, of contrastsbetween light, body and symbol, suggest the aliens are combinations of propertieswe worship without knowing how to integrate them into our evolution.Lower right is the saucer that ends the film. Myth, vehicle, persona, state, inversion,theme all in one image.A man punches Indy after removing his brimless hat, and then an arrival stops himfrom continuing: Through a cloudy, dusty car window (a gray haze) appears IrinaSpalko. Craving next-level consciousness, she looks, dresses and acts foreign: Shemocks her own role practically as an illegal alien. Her outfit, gray, her skin,porcelain white, her back and belt affixed with five-pointed stars. He singles her toshow us her blue eyes and red lips, but the coloration is subtle. Despite the warmglow of the incandescent bulbs or the setting sun, she is ghosted with unearthlylight. Her hair/helmet suggest the spheres of Lucas' magnum opus villain: Vader -she carries swords around as if a duel is ready to happen at any minute. Havingrequested and repeatedly been denied the chance to direct one of the new StarWars films by Lucas, this is his replacement chance.Welcome to Steven Spielberg's Star Wars film."you're not from around here."The questioners and questioned form a five star-pattern of bodies. She tells Indythat she wants knowledge buried inside his head and opens her hand in an attemptto read his mind psychically. He laughs at her and she tells him that he is hard toread. She soft slaps him in a mirror of Indy's first punch, and now he mocks herfurther by replying 'ouch.' The words know and knowledge are used repeatedly incontrast to gold and treasure. These white-skinned Westerners have separatedthese concepts and are now adrift in an unconscious, somewhat undergroundintrafaith war. Indy, though he searches for ancient relics (that she boldly shattersand sweeps away underfoot mimicking the opening shot), doesn't know thepurpose of this quest. Neither do, actually. Each film references a differing rationale,he is hired by the U.S. Gov't in Raiders, stumbles into a desiccated village-in-needin Temple of Doom and chases after his kidnapped father in Crusade. Each filmshowcases Indy's realizations played out as central theme, here little or no purposeis realized. Our nemesis Spalko, provides the balance, she is the film's purpose, notunlike the Smith character in The Matrix, a catalyst that hides the full possibility ofknowledge. A dangerous and unconscious division of labor.A wide reveal shows us a massive building, on the scale of several aircraft hangars,where two Soviet technicians stand staring at its security and with a flourish, Spalkorepeats the gesture of reading Indy's mind, and the door's lock explodes, thegateway doors part for them to reveal a massive warehouse, the warehouse thatended Raiders of the Lost Ark. Gears opening this door are mirrored at film's endwith the flooding gears that crush their escape route, like Lucas' Star Wars films,Skull is littered with scale-mirrors that create a visual dialogue no one inside thefilm seems to be aware of. This throwaway Force gesture: the massive warehouse ismuch easier to 'read' than Jones' head, both are filled with similar information ofdiffering types. Perversely labeled only on the inside, "51," the facility's appearanceas the first archeological decrypt (Indy's skills are normally used to find ancienttreasures in original settings), means this film is evolving the notion of treasure.Indy himself has contributed artifacts here (his complicity is in question). The roomis both maze and reliquary locale, cobwebs blanket the anonymous and endlesswooden crates like other tombs of earlier empires: a powerful indictment of modernAmerica's concept of itself. It simply collects the previous civilization's treasuresand hides them, not with the panache of a mystical or mythical want, but with coldheadedbureaucracy/technocracy. A soulless empire that counts Indiana as amember.In a reverse of Raiders, this film starts in the warehouse and ends in the SouthAmerican jungle exactly 20 years later. Indy protests and is shown the tip of hersword. The box she is looking for Indy has already seen, a box among boxes. Shetells him that the contents were inspected ten years earlier and he remembers. Heasks for a compass, and his companion Mac turns the directions into an identitywhen he underlines "west;" the screenplay is commenting on the futility of claiminga point on the horizon as our own. He commandeers gunpowder, since the contentsof this particular box are highly magnetized, and begins a sinister search, the groupfollowing the shifting ghost movements of the powder high above the boxes. Spalkoeven uses the wording paradoxically: "What is the point Dr. Jones..?"Notice similarities to the chamber at film's end? She stares again at a blinding lightat that height differential, this is a throne-room shot which represents the scaledpower of knowledge. The alien replaces Indiana here in the final scene, a transitionin evolutionary terms. The point of this shot is to create a differential in light withthe alien, who is the summary of the light and the body (the skeletons generate thespotlights in the final scene), while here Indy and the light are separated,uncombined, unevolved.Once found, the box opens and metal in all directions begins to follow it, even thelight fixtures are pulled, saucer shapes resembling UFO's. The Soviets have openedseveral boxes nearby and the metal contents of other secrets begin to follow thechosen one under its magnetic power: This treasure causes all other treasures tofollow it, it is 'above them' in a way. A sealed steel box is opened like a large trunk:an unearthly shroud is cut and an Alien is revealed, the product of the Roswellcrash. As the coffin is opened, Spielberg shows us Spalko in the mirror of thecontainer.Surreally the body is covered in a gray rubberized form, an allusion to her, and asshe reverently cuts open the gray, she is cutting open her mirror in the film. Indy,not having seen the being, escapes and commandeers a truck, attempting toescape with the contents. MacHale (Ray Winstone) tells his Soviet driver, engagedin a game of chicken with Jones in an alley-like passage, that he doesn't know whathe is dealing with in car-dueling with Indy, the opening drag race is now reverted:he repeats "you don't know, you don't know!' as both cars implode; Indy escapesand is caught by the Soviet head man and they fall into a new room with a glassdisc on the floor (a Star Wars-type element and a saucering reference that portalswith the squared aisles of boxes above).and they fall again, into a room with a platform lit in cool fluorescent bulbs (StarWars references that mimic the jet-sled that follows below)and below is a glass sealed observation room, a massive jet engine on a testingsled - tracks lead out into the darkness. The duel triggers a countdown and the thetwo men are sent into the desert at Mach speeds, where prairie dogs watch theflaming jet race by mirroring the opening shot, car to jet. The animals are watchinga needless human comedy to dominate speed not travel. The flames mirror the '32coupe. The jet comes to rest at a terminal taken visually straight out of CloseEncounters of the Third Kind's landing site. In many ways, Skull has its core liftedfrom CE3K: Harold Oxley is this film's Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfus), whose psychicimplant/vision leads him to the Devil's Tower ending, suggesting in parallel onlyOxley is suitable to enter the next stage of the saucer's consciousness/vision.Indy escapes into the night, and finds a canyon (another Star Wars visual reference)that exposes into a distant suburban town. Far below, in what appears to be aperfect suburban landscape he narrowly escapes being discovered by his Sovietpursuers as he jumps a backyard fence and enters a house through the kitchen,where faucets run dry (paradoxically, staged car washing has real water: seeabove). Unlike the suburban settings of previous Spielberg films, imperfect, nicked,dusty, these are falsely perfect, it is his latest comment on his origins in suburbanPhoenix. The TV blares "What time is it?" as in Howdy-Doody time, a perverselyperfect reference to the film's subliminal message as a time-travel corpus. Theplace is a frozen (in time) set to test Atomic bombs. Indy quickly finds shelter in alead-lined refrigerator (mimicking the alien corpse's container) and once the bombexplodes, a shot shows the blast taking the TV out first, he is propelled into the air,outrunning the unlucky Soviets who stare at the new missile-refrigerator: they areconsumed in the fireball. Spielberg vaporizes his former locale: a fake suburbia, aplace he reverently used to refer to (Poltergeist/ET). The fridge settles on theground, expels Indy, who stares at a prairie dog that hides from him, mirroring theopening shot.Mimicking the first shot of Indy's reveal from the car trunk, military star left, realone right. Indy and his Saucer-hat in the middle, again this is a shot-image glyphthat suggests these are separations of what the alien combines to achieveimmortality-as-dimension-traveling:As if to barrel the mirroring point across, the film pans establishing a desert AFB,replete with the new sound of jet engines, and a hangar where Indy is taken. Insidea room that seems identical to the one that he and the Soviet crashed into earlier,Indy is scrubbed of his annoyance: radiation poisoning. The film then has its reverseof Raider's Federal scene, U.S. Agents suggest paranoia as a rule and dispute allclaims of patriotism. Knowledge has many values. Indy angrily recounts how littlehe was made aware of the stored material in question, and for the second time hehas been disallowed from knowing what the government has found. The state iscomplicit in humanity's lack of consciousness about the ethereal AND the real. As afilm without true heroes and villains, Crystal Skull is a daring blockbuster. Thereturn of the Crystal Skull is the film's central mystery. The vectors for the returnhappen to be a legend that becomes a myth. The U.S. Govt is powerless to stop itand the Soviet state is powerless to control it. Each is measured in its humiliation ascustodian of the potential of the inherent 'crystal' knowledge, and each fall underthe spell of the military star to contain its use within the culture. Lucas andSpielberg suggest as conquerors/graverobbers of the preexisting American cultures,we are separated from the ability to achieve consciousness while we regard ourmath, our cosmology as pinnacle/peerless. How can we learn from something wedominate?Returned to teaching, Indy is quickly removed from his post once the FBI begins torifle through his files, and he flees for a job offer in Leipzig (once a place of enemiesin earlier films, now an accepted scholarly destination). Materializing out of fog,Indy's own personal sequel Mutt (a joke-reference since Indiana is named for aformer dog of Lucas's, and referenced larkishly by the film's opening song: HoundDog), initiates his next grave-digging, luring the Jones scion with a letter and thepromise of a crystal skull, the lost city of Akator (known commonly as "El Dorado")and the grave of famed searcher of Akator, Francisco Orellana.But not before the Jones team is chased biker vs. car across the Yale/Marshallcampus, culminating in a Soviet car knocking down a statue of Marcus Brody, hishead separating and crashing through a windshield: a perfect warning for the film'sending in which a statue's head is reattached. Knowledge is regained in the koanicreversal. This is the first throne (maybe the only) to a kingdom we are shown.Indy ably converts Mutt's incipient play with conflict (he wets his comb in a soc'sCoke, takes a pending beer that Indy replaces) into an escape device. Fending offthe pursuit, Indy directs his son (in their first chase scene) to ditch into the librarywhere they slide to a slow end just missing a student carrying a stack of books. Hetells his students to get out of the library and do real field research, grabbing a holdto his progeny and darting away. A plane-traveling shot reveals the view below (aview down that "only the gods can see") of Nazca lines, a lost civilization thatcreated massive pictograms aimed at eyes staring down from the sky. Wickedly,they show you a spider (the weaver of consciousness), and a spiral, the film'smotion evolution AND the motion of the plane's propeller. This film is perhaps themost vehicular of the Indy films: even the final river passage is on a gas combustionamphibious auto. Once in Peru, a long tracking shot moves from Mutt's spinning hisknife (spirals) to a colonial South American church that frames the background, theseat of spiritual power once, through a market to an archway that frames atelephone pole that represents a Christian cross. The market showcases the variouslevels of conquest/cultural identity remains that the European presence created, ina nod to Raiders, Indy spits, mirroring Marion's in a similar market in Cairo. Thescene is the only time we see ethnicities interacting somewhat in harmony. Thiscross motif has followed us all the way from the Atomic checkpoint, wheretelephone poles drift in the distance, to here, where they come into frame from thedistance: Mac stands underneath this ending cross, identifying an intra-Christianwar for the skull. Paradoxically, even members of the same faith find new ways togo to war: the border.As subliminal commentary on the conquest of America (the film referencesOrellana's El Dorado quest but mentions this word only once, replacing it with aStar Wars-ish trademarkable fiction: Akator), the film is set continuously in awestern construct that created domain/order over American indigenous spirituality,the college (an enlightenment neo-gothicism), the book that first shows us theNazca lines (that duplicates 'god's eye's view' for any consumer), the Church toAsylum tracking shot, each illustrate a determined and unconscious colonialism. Asthe only Jones film set entirely in this hemisphere, the creative team may be goingfor broke with their thematic embrace of the American/colonialism idiom. Voyagesinto hidden cities under ruins allows for contact with mythically dangerousprotectors. The first scene is basically an indoctrination into Americanconsciousness, hot-rod to convoy to base/storage-control to nuclear inception viasuburban freeze frame Apocalypse. As a film series that once showed a slight,National Geographic-like respect towards the primitive/dark, this film is a process ofskin-tone and relations discordance. The campus is populated only by white people(he shows you a white-on-white socs vs. greasers rumble in the coffee shop, fills ananti-communist rally of all whites). And to contrast, the natives that guard tombsnow walk and move supernaturally, if subtly. As a film about racism laced in'treasure seeking,' the dice are loaded differently.The overarching magnetism of racism is the one emitted by the first blockbuster inthe Americas. The Birth of a Nation was a sentimental superscape of reconstructionsouthern justice grafted on Woodrow Wilson's white man's burden, looped aroundfears of the dark and of a burrowing fear of the rising weight of black identity. Like alighting strike into every movie theater, Americans thronged to see this opera ofhatred dressed as a patriotic counterpoint to WWI. Its power was so unique it aloneinstigated the Klan's resurrection and is no doubt indirectly responsible for thedeaths of humans. The blockbuster was born here with a bang, and its makerGriffiths no doubt comprehended the potential furor his film was to cause. As if tocounterweight Griffiths, the makers decide to satirize the form, the genre they'verecreated once before, they now see its problematic groove, so the answer is tobuild a Flaubert-like trap. If you don't laugh at it, you're probably it.The film at its hidden core a self-consciously twisted parody-commentary of ethnicrelations as dark primeval men defend palaces with white skinned otherlingsgrasping for keys (or in one case, possessing them) to eternity. This is a dark filmthat suggests a hell-bent satirical lens on obvious racial relations in mirrorconquests occurring here in 5000 BC (when the 'Aliens' land and build Akator) andthen in 1500 AD (when Orellana comes close to achieving what Indy/Oxley/Spalkogo half way with), essentially a view inside the myth of conquest. The elements arenot riddles, in fact the riddles that appear are distortions that hide the real meaningof the film from the audience, in effect a sly send-up to other films like NationalTreasure, but the film itself is a heaving, gaping riddle, it acts as both paradigm andteaching tool. The question becomes: do we want these keys to eternity? Inside theinsane asylum, past dark skinned inmates, rotored ceiling fans and a spinning vinylrecord disc of soothing music, they are shown Oxley's former cell,a skull reverted as a room, and dialogue that uses the word 'mind' repeatedly: thewindows make eyes, a motif reversed once arriving in Akator where eyes peer frombehind a bas relief skull. The skull has been carved into the wall and the phrase'return' is listed in all languages its occupant knew: Oxley is telling the key idea tothe audience: Return. It is a direct command to the children in the audience. Theword also decodes Oxley's two discoveries, he returns to the chamber he found theskull to hide it and of course they decrypt the resting place, a pyramidal structureoverlooking Nazca lines, a previously unfound city where 'living dead' guardiansattempt to kill grave-robbers. Pointedly, the guardians are the heroes here, Indy andson are ambiguously allowed to enter, they are the Christian poachers among anindigenous group, Indy satirically mutters: "It's good we're not grave robbers."When Mutt thinks he sees someone, Indy blares out satirical racism "Ah, you'rejumpin at shadows."Deep in the bowels of the temple are chambered passageways. One openingpasses over a disc (a saucer), an Aztec calendar dial, that levers to expose another,deeper chamber. If Skull begins with a western wheel flying across the plains, itbisects here with a Mesoamerican (Olmec, Zapotec, Mixtec, Mayan) time wheelliterally and allegorically used as a passageway. Crucially the Maya like the Aztecdid not invent or use the wheel in transportation, Lucas is suggesting the alternateuse of the wheel is to re-imagine time, and crucially Indy does not recognize it forus: our culture doesn't see it, we see the combustion-engine wheel as our claim tomovement.Inside are seven wrapped bodies, members of Francisco De Orellana's entourage.One is exposed to the world by Indy cutting using Mutt's knife (he cuts throughbrown/tan/white colors ie: Indy's own outfit) and we see his pale face decompose (itlooks like he died yesterday), and the rigorous (and futile) attempt to gainimmortality is shown to the children in the audience, the what and how thedeception of immortality works (or is hoped for): white skin decomposes to deadtissue. A motif of accelerated decrepitude, the dissolving face has made anappearance in earlier Jones films (even the heartless sacrificial of Doom has hishead scalded). This momentarily perfectly preserved face is Indy's mirror (incounterpoint to Spalko's alien, she is gray cutting through gray). Once Orellana'sbody is found: a paradox is shown. We view the decomposed body of Orellanaprotected by armor, capped by a golden face mask (humans mistake the gold oftreasure with its metaphor: the sun's rays that hide a doorway to time-travel) , aclearly poor use of materials to achieve an everlasting life. The Kingdom Miltonspeaks of is not here or in Akator, but buried inside every conqueror, whetherconquistador or archeologist. Calling it a Kingdom may be its undoing, its paradox,the title tells us why the Skull's treasure is unachievable. Underneath the bodyhowever, hidden behind his head, is the real prize, the crystal skull Orellana hadstolen and Oxley had rediscovered and returned to hide from the Soviets. Indianamutters a key word: "Unbelievable" and in his hands is the opposite of the bodiesaround him, this being is eternal having fused the materials from their dimensionalhome and made the bone and brain/neuron elements longer lasting than mereflesh. Possession of it is pointless, it must be returned for its secrets to be known.Again, all other metal treasure follows this unusual magnetism. A treasure above allothers. The Skull might be the most intimate metaphor for the computer and itselementally purified circuitry, a solid state living consciousness by all appearancesinert. The neuron evolved progressively.Once outside the temple, Soviets appear and take the Skull for their own and Indyand Mutt are taken prisoner and sped to the Amazon. Deep in the Amazonianjungle, a Soviet camp is exposed to us, where Indy sits strapped in a tent, and theforest's edge is lit by a campfire surrounded by dancing Russians. Mac reminds himthe real goal is to find Akator, where a city of gold is promised. He is replaced bySpalko who suggests the crystal skulls are products of an unearthly civilization.Notice the opaque nets that project Indy's hat-shape and whose head is inside thesaucer shape. Oxley is then presented and his madness of the Skull seems to be asubtle form of telepathy (he seems to 'hear' Indy think later in the film once theskull's 'magic' is performed on him). Apparently the skulls open up new areas insidethe mind, the purpose is unknown except Oxley presents a barely logical being,speaking in riddle, barely aware of the physical, and gesturing in mid air. Indy isforced to experience the power of the skull, which is uncovered and charged withelectricity and sends a signal into Jones's brain. The effects cause a series ofspasms. As in other films, Indy appears to have been transformed.It is clear Oxley's transformation by the skull was not like Indy's, he seems to havebeen taken over, his eyes never engage others, he auto-writes. Indy'stransformation is artificial. Oxley's door to consciousness is opened (and shemisidentifies him as weak-minded).Discovering that Oxley auto-writes in mid-air when asked questions, the images hegestures with turn out to be logograms of Mayan that create a riddle for the locationof Akator. Indy decodes these, and after a half-baked escape attempt that revealsMutt's role as Indy and Marion Ravenwood's son (set in sinking dry sand), findthemselves on a journey across the Amazon basin to find it.Leading the path through the jungle is a Soviet jungle-leveling machine, descendantdirectly from the mythology of Star Wars Episode I in which a Trade Federationbehemoth shreds jungle without blinking. Tied up are the newly reunited familyJones, where their escape is guaranteed, and fraught with inter-family squabbling,humorously son cries out 'oh, shit' in relief when Indy opens a switchblade frombehind his back to cut his bindings. Indy's first move to disrupt the convoy is to aiman RPG at the jungle shredder between son and wife, and it causes the disc cutterto be propelled directly at them, bisecting each car in succession (a mirror of the 32coupe's bisecting the prairie dog's mound, the process continues, amplifies,evolves).As ingenuity of fighting continues absurdly (Mutt duels Spalko ala Vader and Luke),and the Skull changes cars and hands multiple times, Mutt is lifted from the convoyby a vine, where he encounters a canopy of monkeys, and he faces one whosheepishly looks at him. Outlandishly he follows them as they swing away, adding aTarzan mythology to the unfolding hilarity.. he tracks them as Indy and Spalko carduelagainst a cliff wall, another motif from Raiders appears. As Spalko prepares toerase Jones, Mutt lands into her car, grabbing the skull and leaping to the other car.Spalko angrily hurls a monkey.Crashing into a clearing, both vehicles are overrun by giant ants that swarm andattack the highest mammals and consume their bodies once fallen. The Skullprovides a void from the ants, who avoid it in an invisible field that surrounds it. Itattracts all metal and repels insects. Spalko escapes by climbing onto a vine andsuspending herself (she uses Mutt's escape in mirror), even crushing an ant thatmanages to crawl along an air bridge made of innumerable ants, its innardssplattering onto the lens in an ape of a previous Spielberg film. The lens is an (untilnow invisible) disc we view the film through. The ants don't run from the vehicleslike the prairie dog does.Marion rescues them by leaping off the cliff and repelling off a bending tree thatslides them into the Amazon softly. The Soviets follow behind.After three drops of the waterfalls, a parody of Temple of Doom's improbableopening air escape, the group finds themselves facing a skull-shaped outcroppingthat pours water, this serves as the entrance to Akator. Once inside the muralsindicate a prehistoric civilization that possessed incredible technology, andattended by long-headed humanoids that were worshiped like kings, 13 of them,the shadowed skull overlayed onto a golden shimmering equal figure.A deeper tour shows them a dark series of passageways that lead to a promenade.Out of a bas-relief wall skull, peer eyes that follow the intruders. And then the wallscrumble and protectors of the 'Kingdom' appear. The warriors hurl boleadoras totrip our heroes, until they see the crystal skull, and they withdraw in awe.Indy and group make it up the next temple, which has a four pronged roof elementand a sunken platform. Sand is improbably at this raised platform's deck. Indydecodes Oxley's interpretation and they begin to pull out mask elements that holdback a chamber of sand (the idols are suggestive, elongated skulls), and once inmotion, the massive pyramid top reveals a collapsing stone form that draws thefour prongs into a central object: an Obelisk. Music cues indicate the theme fromWar of the Worlds. The burial of these ships in both films is a conscious parallel. Theobelisk is a war-god. They fall into it not unlike his and Marion's sand escapade. Thesand placed atop a pyramid suggests our use of sand as time counting medium: thehourglass. The forms used in this sequence, the obelisk assembly, the steppedplatform to sand, the withdrawing rectangular steps are all allusions to real andfilmic objects from outside sources.Inside the chamber below a series of cork screw steps are revealed that slowlywithdraw, forcing them to race time and reach the bottom before they tumble ontospikes that have killed previous violators.In another chamber deeper in the temple, a massive storage room of othercivilizations is revealed, Etruscan, Sumatran, Greek, Mongol. The appearance of somany differing time-scales forces the audience to resolve what time-frames arebeing layered here. Indy tries to help by muttering: "They were archeologists."Treasures of metal again follow the Skull. Or were they archeologists in disguise?Are these artifacts simply a lure created through a myth, in case the treasure is notactivated? Or are they evidence the Saucer Beings gather to determine whether ornot to implement the Skull myth and its lure? Simply put: the aliens know theplanet's (perhaps this is occurring on many other planets with semi-sentient beingslike us) future-cultures will use archeology on a quest for awakening all treasures,and in effect, the Saucermen 'test' the culture to see if it can be evolved into theircrystal dimension. Here obviously humanity comes close, but fails. Note thetreasures are destroyed when the Saucer departs, they had no use for the material.Consider the strangeness of the dilmena, the Skull was never 'stolen,' the paradoxof the throne room's entrance checkpoint: how could Orellana have gotten pastthis? The aliens arrived in 5000BC, collect artifacts from FUTURE societies, lureconquerors/archeologists, who repeatedly 'find' the skull (its legend about beingstolen is only half true, who actually entered the final throne room: no one, the skullwas intentionally circulated to make its return necessary and a key to opening thedoorway to the next stage). If the phrase is 'return,' then interestingly, perhaps ourtime system is going backwards and this saucer civilization is going forwards. Evenas metaphor science has a correlation potential in physics.At the chamber's center is a Doorway where Oxley seems to think the Skull belongsand Indy finally utilizes the Skull's magnetism as it was intended. This is the secondcheckpoint in the film, look at their shared properties (yes, go back to thebeginning, the subtleties are amazing). Notice the colorless world of the artifactssurrounding and the colorful doorway that seems to have defied aging. Notice thisis a visual mutation of the first warehouse, only now the boxes and the enclosed areseparated, the boxes make up the forms that compose the throne room and itsentrance way. What we held as precious in our warehouse they use a decoration tothe doorway of their treasure. A fertilization allegory doorway is enacted, this is aTime Machine they are entering, as the Skull draws an arrow down separatinglayers of forms that part to reveal a corbelled passageway that opens into achamber floored by an Aztec calendar disc. The lighting is spotted like the initialwarehouse, except now the saucer forms on the ceiling that were light sources aremerged with the beings: they glow, a summary of the image of Indiana atop theboxes, now they are. On thirteen thrones are crystal skeletons, they sit inert. One ismissing a head, the 'stolen' skull's body. The camera's movement showcases themirror theme (see below). The thirteen are a nod to the Mayan uses of 13, anumber beyond our basic acceptance of decimal thinking (and perhaps we reject itsupernaturally through fear: triskadephobia), suggest to the audience that thesuccessful search for nuances in math that lead to quantum leaps may be out ofour reach as long as we discard or misunderstand vastly complex lost civilizations.The saucer theme, the seven notes that sound haunted, are a reduction of theRaiders theme,play both in your head: a dark, creepy musical response to thetheme that plays heroically throughout the series.Spalko, having traced their route, enters the chamber as Oxley presents the Skull tothe skeleton. She proclaims them a hive mind, an observation no less flawed thanIndy's, both mistake their mirrors as their conquest-by-labeling, they apply themeaning without comprehending the totality. She grabs the skull and proceeds tocomplete the uniting of the two parts, mind and body. As she returns the skull, itlurches and flies back to its place under its own power. Listen to it clang in place,the noise is meant to suggest the impossibility of separating them, hinting theseparation was their choice. It immediately stares at Oxley, clearly chosen toreceive the Skull's inter-dimensional 'treasure' who begins speaking(telepathy/ventriloquism) in Mayan. The chamber begins to revolve and collapse,the boxes/bricks break apart Lego-style (slyly referring to both the initial warehouseand the Lego tie-in toys), its 13 inter-dimensional parts now reunited and readyitself to 'return'. Spalko, sensing that Oxley is about to receive its knowledge,interrupts the exchange and demands it for herself, she returns to her role as a kingworshiper, as in the frame earlier in the warehouse observing Indy scatteringshotgun pellets. The being turns to her and begins to transmit. "I can see" sheclaims as it begins. Sunlight glints inside through holes in the collapsing chamber,Spalko receives unearthly light (as in Raiders) and embodies the image glyphs ofIndy in front of both suns and sun objects). The sole goal of the previously inertcrystal beings IS to await Oxley's/humanity's potential transformation.Oxley, Indy, Mutt, Mac and Marion quickly figure out the chamber is doomed aspieces (boxes) of it begin to rise up to a four pronged portal into another dimension(an upwards mirror to the obelisk assembly). They escape but not before Mac isconsumed by the whirlwind, his greed making him susceptible. As the chamberdissolves, the 13 beings are reunited into a central, fleshed alien (proof this is onebeing's separated dimensions as separate skeletons) that continues to flood Spalkowith unearthly wisps of ghostly energy, but now it is too much. Not having beenprimed like Oxley to receive the treasure (is it the treasure of Quantumconsciousness?), the knowledge that may have injected humanity and evolved us isnow lost as Spalko is consumed, she demands that the flow stop "Cover it" is herbegging, assuming the skull is inert and under her command as before. The aliencrushes her in a reverse of her crushing the ant, each creature distanced byperhaps 100's of millions of years of evolution; hinting at: these are probablybeings evolved from humans that have traveled back in time from their future, timeIS space. Imagine the crystal skull that Oxley could have grown (obviously you aregiven one with this consciousness), the attempted crystallization of Spalko's brainkilled her. Sensing her rejection, the alien sneers at her, a gesture repeated manytimes in the film across knowledge chasms both between humans and betweenhumans and previous evolutionary chains, vaporising her into oblivion. The treasureis lost, the alien departs. The humans of the future having rejected us just as wehave rejected them by misinterpretation.As the remaining group escapes past massive gears that collapse (as mirrors)together that flood (the gears are part of an entire complex designed and built torelease the saucer and cover its tracks) with water (in a parody of Apocalypto'sending, the family Jones is ejected by a spiraling water spout that projects themonto a cliff overlooking the temple). From above they watch as the pyramid andobelisk (our war-gods) collapses and a giant saucer (their time travel) rises inside afunnel of massive chunks of earth, finally disappearing into the sky. A large scale(perpendicular) mirror to the opening smashing of the prairie dog's mound. And it isan inversion of the mushroom cloud, Spielberg slowly incorporates the sun into theshot as mirror economically making the graphic connection.In the coda, set in a brightly lit church, Indy and Marion are married and as a finalmetaphor, wind blows open the door sending Indy's fedora to the feet of Mutt (theentire theme of the film is this saucer form: knowledge searching for immortality),who attempts to try it on until Indy swipes it, departing the church. The act itself amirror for the audience's exit.

Fallen: "Myyyyyy.. MATRIX!!"Indy: "It belongs in a museum!!"also pretty amusing concept that Shia is Indy's kid (since Crystal Skull) so it's like Sam, or 'Mutt' went on his own little Indiana-esque adventure.

*Head explodes*Greatest. Movie. Ever!I personally didn't mind TF2. A few things about the plot in relation to the first one irked me, but that's about it. Didn't think it was as good as the first one, but it was still a fun watch.Excellent work, as always!